A drug is a chemical for the treatment of a disease. As the kinds of drug, there are not only prescription drugs, the use of which is restricted to the case of prescription of a doctor, but also non-prescription drugs, which a patient can buy directly from a pharmacist after consultation. Also, quasi-drugs, which can be bought in drugstores or supermarkets without any specific limitation, can also be considered drugs.
Recently, as quasi-drugs, which include household drugs, have come to be sold in convenience stores and the like, there is growing concern over drug abuse and misuse. That is, even if a drug can be bought without restriction, because a user may abuse or misuse the drugs, it is necessary to handle this problem.
In particular, when mixtures of different drugs are used, a “cocktail effect”, which refers to the interaction of one drug with another drug, may occur. In special cases, a cocktail effect may induce positive effects. For example, specialists use a cocktail therapy for the treatment of AIDS. However, because a cocktail effect may result in negative effects in many cases, great care is needed.
If a patient has multiple diseases, a mixture of drugs that causes serious side effects may be prescribed due to the complex interactions between the diseases and the patient, even though the drugs are prescribed by a doctor. Also, a cocktail effect may occur because multiple drugs are used as a result of the patient's carelessness. However, unlike specialists, patients have difficulty in predicting a cocktail effect arising from the use of a mixture of drugs. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a method that enables an ordinary person to determine whether a cocktail effect is likely to occur and to refrain from taking a drug that may cause negative effects.
Meanwhile, a QR code is a two-dimensional grid matrix type code, ‘QR’ being an acronym of ‘Quick Response’. A conventional one-dimensional barcode can store 20 bytes of numeric information, more or less, while a QR code can store a maximum of 7089 numeric characters, a maximum of 4296 ASCII characters, a maximum of 2953 bytes of binary data (each byte comprising 8 bits), or a maximum of 1817 characters of Kanji. Also, a QR code has a high recognition speed and a high recognition rate, and is superior in the accuracy of data restoration. Furthermore, because users may easily acquire information stored in a QR code by scanning the QR code using a smart device, no additional device for recognizing the QR code is necessary, and the extent of utilization of QR codes has increased with the rapid spread of smart devices. Accordingly, various methods have been developed in order to make use of QR codes, but QR codes have not been used in the field of drugs.